Sparkplugging

Inspired Business Growth

We’ll keep this short and sweet, because nothing else she said mattered or hit as hard as this:

“Every day I had to hear my internal voice say, “Who are you to charge that much or who will come to my site to read this?” Every single day, another internal voice had to say, “Who are you NOT TO!?”

Amendment: One more came out at the end: “I want more time! Reply: There is no more time, give me more YOU!”

Successful-Blog

Customers:  Is your traffic a reader or a customer?

Don’t sell your customers something they don’t need or what you think they need. Sell them what they want.

Make it about them.

How to be irresistable. They are all about Frosted Mini Wheats. The fiber appeals to the adult in me. The sugar appeals to the kid in me. If I don’t want breakfast, you need to tell me something to make me want them. Tell me they make a good snack or that they are good for me.

Head, heart, and meaning.

ChrisBrogan.com

PodCamp

What Pirates Teach Me About Community

Believe in humans:

Ask. Do. Share. Give your ideas handles. Make it useful. Give more than you ask back. Be clear about your business. Hack. Make Pirates.

Businesses are full of people. You don’t talk to businesses, you talk to people. [interject: HE IS HILARIOUS]

HACK:

Take the environment around you to make it what you want to be. Wherever you can change the things around you, you can make money. You can walk into any business with a clipboard and a piece of paper and pwn it.

Community vs…:

Don’t mess with community or it will mess with you.

Marketplace:

Do you believe in something or are you selling it? You don’t have to sell everything you like.

Passion:

Superheros taught me a lot about passion. Has anyone not had a customer service experience that drove us into the arms of another lover (figuratively speaking). If you want to piss people off, say “Apple sucks” on your blog.

Trust:

When you start making marketplaces out of your blog, you are funneling part of your trust into sales. Be very careful what you put down that funnel.

Get more bang from your blog:

• Create
• Learn
• Promote

Brainstorm your content ideas. It’s the biggest part of the process. If you just re-hash other people’s stuff, it shows. People can just go to the source if that’s all you’re doing. How do you find ideas? Talking to other bloggers is a huge source of ideas. Commuting is a good time to think, but you need to record every idea. Take some time to generate content and it will pay dividends in the future.

The Business Process:

• Source bits
• Put bits together
• Deliver stuff
• Happy customer

Blogging Efficiency: 5 minute post

• Start at the end
• Know who you’re writing for
• Know what you’re writing about
• Convey the reason to avoid the “So what?”

Lorelle on WordPress

Taking your Camera on the Road

The Blog Herald

Blogger and Podcaster Magazine

Woopra

WordPress is Lorelle’s domain. She publishes over 21 articles per week on several blogs and print magazines. We had a quick question and answer session to explore some definitions of blogging, and now we’re working on defining our business with 6 points:

• List all the words that describe your blog business.
• Who’s going to love what you do?
• What reasons do you have for wanting to do this?
• Using these words, summarize what you do, whom you sell to, and why you are doing it.
• Mark the key elements in order of importance.
• In “10 words or less,” answer the question: What do you do?

Copyblogger
Teaching Sells

If you don’t know who Brian Clark is, you have been in a blogging cave for 2 years. What no one seems to know is that he is not a copyeditor as a profession, in that he does not take clients and edit material. It is more about using the platform for SEO and making money with profitable business models online.

The only site he does that includes the word “Blogger” is Copyblogger. That trend will likely continue to avoid the pre-conceived notions of blogging due to the diary and gossip blogs. It’s not really a part of business media. Let’s focus on making money.

A Business Model is NOT: (not a Revenue Model)

• It’s not your revenue source
• It’s not your traffic strategy
• It’s not blogging

Are You in the Content Business?

• Content is marketing
• You’re always selling
• Sell everything possible

The Three A’s of a Social Media Business

• Phase 1: Attention
• Phase 2: Authority
• Phase 3: Acceleration

Attention Rules:

• Choose a high-demand subject area – carve out a niche out of a huge audience
• Position the site to be remarkable
• Offer independent value with content
• Utilize headlines and hooks
• Transform attention into authority via social proof
• Capitalize on link equity for search engine optimization
• Maximize subscriber base and build sub-lists
• Promote affiliate offers to see what the market wants

Acceleration Rules:

• Build “back end” pages and spin-off sites
• Develop your own products or services (bigger profit margin selling your own material and services)
• Test landing page copy and offers
• Outsource and automate (so you can go on vactation – money without freedom is hollow)

The topic of the day: models and masterminds. Terry Starbucker got things going with some updates and congrats and thanks to last year’s attendees.

Immediately following, Liz launched into the process of booking sponsors for a conference with less than 1,000 people. We are a swarm of 100 people, not just a conference. Our sponsors for the weekend are: Network Solutions, Utterz, WordPress, Proforma, Jim Beam Global, Buzzlogic, e-Junkie, Plant Moran Financial Advisors, and more.

Terry introduced Anita Bruzzese, and my next post begins.

I love party cruise boats, as they hold a special place in my heart. I took my wife of 18 months on a 3-hour dinner yacht cruise of Tampa Bay for our 4th anniversary just a couple of months before we got married. They are so fun and comfortable, and there’s never a lack of scenery or food.

I am very much looking forward to re-connecting with those folks from last year, especially Terry Starbucker, Muhammed Saleem, and Phil Gerbyshak. I’m also highly anticipating meeting my new business buddy, Cory Miller and his friend, Brian Gardner. I’m sure this year, I’ll meet new people and make new connections.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot! Liz is announcing a new contest today on the SOBCon site.

So how about it? Does the boat cruise spice it up enough to push you over into the “in” crowd?

This morning, I made arrangements on Travelocity to fly American Airlines and saved over $80 from yesterday’s rates. I don’t have any idea what happened there, but I’ll take it. The only downside to my particular return flight is that it gets me back to Tampa at 10:45pm on Sunday night. Work will be a real drag in the morning.

I’m totally stoked about getting off the plane at O’Hare and walking out to the curb to meet Terry Starbucker enroute to the hotels. We aren’t staying at the same hotel, but I can assure you that I’ll be heading wherever the action is as soon as I can.

If you are still making plans to come, join me at Club Quarters and we’ll have our own group over there. Free wi-fi, baby!

• Obviously, a big pull for a founding attender is to re-connect with old friends from last year’s event. I met more people in one place in those two days than I had in a very long time before that, and not since.
• The speakers and format of the event is unlike any other I have seen around or heard talk of. We will actually be in small workshops to look at ways to make our blogs better, to meet the needs of our readers and ourselves.
• Liz and Terry picked a terrific venue for the event this year at the Summit Executive Centre, near the Miracle Mile. There are several selections of hotels within walking distance, and two of them are offering conference discounts. I will likely be staying at the Club Quarters, if you want to meet me in the bar for some chillaxing and geeking.